Last year I moved into an apartment on the second floor, with a balcony, which means I could finally start drying my laundry on a line, thereby saving lots of electricity. I did, however, discover a completely new hangup: I need to pair all my clothespins. I have pretty, coloured, plastic clothespins (they won’t rot if I leave them outside on the balcony). Every garment must have two clothespins of the same make and colour. (The rule does not apply to additional clothespins that may be needed for a large garment, but the first two pins must be identical.) Socks must be placed side-by-side with clothespins of the same make and colour, except for odd socks, which must be pinned with single clothespins so I can tell that they’re odd. Finally, when possible, the colour of the clothespin must be the same as or similar to the colour of the garment.
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[li]If I am in a place with frequent in/out foot traffic I must be seated so that I can see the entrance. This mainly applies to restaurants and the break room at work.[/li][li]If I see a calendar that isn’t on the current month I go nuts. I have to flip it to the correct month in order to be comfortable.[/li][li]I also have to have the volume on an even number or a multiple of 5.[/li][li]Before I started using my debit card at the gas pump and paid cash I always topped off the amount at the next 0 or 5 so that I wouldn’t have to get pennies in my change.[/li][li]I have a tendency to make bulleted lists (such as this one).[/li][/ul]
Og almighty, one of the grubbier HVAC techs just walked by the kitchenette (conveniently located outside my office) and used his fingers * to pick out a piece of ziti leftover from lunch. Not that I would have eaten something that had been sitting out for 2 hours, but still. I may be sick.
*Ooh, another quirky hang-up!
I get a little stressed if I’m eating alone with nothing to read or nobody to talk to. This stems from high school when I had a bad case of anxiety which affected my swallowing reflex. It’s the vestigal remains of that bad time in my life.
True, but 3 or 5 eggs in the middle is more stable than 3 or 5 eggs at the end.
I always count how many steps it takes me when walking. For example, when walking on sidewalk, I’ll count how many steps I get in each section, “2, 1, 2, 1”, and then I’ll take a big or small step to make sure I keep the pattern going.
Whoa, I can ONLY drink milk from a glass.
I’ve got another.
I won’t drink tap water and will only drink Poland Spring water. Yes, I know it’s bottled tap water.
What will you do if they go out of business or change names? :eek:
Holy crap- I have this one too and had forgotten about it. In fact, I’m completely squicked out right now just from reading your post. I can’t cut my kids’ fingernails and if my wife tells me she just cracked a nail, I get the screaming green heebie-jeebies. Any finger or toenail issues are my kryptonite.
Also, and this may be related, walking on sidewalks or asphalt (either by me or my family members, but not strangers) in bare feet makes my stomach tie up in knots. I’m constantly anticipating a stubbed toe and my body tenses up like I’m expecting to get punched in the gut. And it has nothing to do with thinking I’m going to step on something, it’s all about the stubbed toe on gravel/asphalt/concrete. Last night after I got home I had to run back out to the car to get something out of the trunk and my daughter followed me out; when I turned around to come back in the house I saw her walking down the walk in bare feet and BOOM- there it was, that tension in my gut. Yuck.
My alarm is set for 5:58 AM. Not 6 AM, but 5:58. (For years it was 5:48.)
Reason (for what it’s worth): my first ever alarm clock of my very own was one of the early digital clocks with the digits on little metal squares that flip down, and it had a quirk of its own: you could set the alarm for times roughly 10 minutes apart, but only for those times, and most of them fell on times like 5:38 or 5:48 or 5:58. By the time the clock’s little digits just stopped flipping, I’d had it for about 20 years, and I was just used to getting up at slightly odd times.
Likewise. As a matter of fact…the whole drinking milk ritual has turned into such a torcherous chore that the inabiltiy to appease the sadistic milk gods has put me off of milk altogether.
In my youth, I happily slurped milk and ate cereal, and it was good.
Then I noticed I could not allow my sister to sip it from my glass (juice was ok, though)
Then, I noticed that it had to be well before the ‘sell by’ date for me to drink it.
Then, I noticed I couldn’t drink it unless it was ice cold…BUT! it could not have actual ice cubes in it.
Fine…put it in the freezer, BUT! it could not get those ice crystals in it either
Then I noticed it must be only in a glass, so I needed a glass bowl for my cereal.
Then, one day I said to hell with it. I will wash my chocolate cake down with sweet sticky soda.
Eerie. Are you me? Am I you?
Yeah, sign me up for that one, too. And it has to be reading in bed - reading on my computer doesn’t count. Like last night. I slept only 5-1/2 hours the night before, worked a 14-hour shift (on my feet), came home and did the e-mail & SDMB thing, then played a video game for a couple hours, and finally crawled into bed at 2:30 AM, and read a book until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Turned out the light and fell asleep almost instantly. Had I skipped the reading part, I know from experience I’d have laid there, wide awake, for an hour or so.
Also, this thread has inspired me to rap.
You down with OCD?
Yeah you know me …
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[li]Any loose skin or scab is not allowed to remain on my body, or occasionally those of my close friends. I have to peel sunburns or scratch at the flaky skin left over from a recent wound. If you’re not completely attached, skin, you have no business being here![/li]
[li]I have to save the best-tasting food for my last bite. I don’t eat food in order, but if the meatloaf is the best-tasting food on the plate, it has to be the last thing I taste.[/li]
[li]I can’t eat something sweet last. If I have a cookie or something similar, I have to finish with something salty. It’s closer to how my mouth tastes normally. So I usually end up eating the fruit or sweet stuff first, a terrible habit I’m sure.[/li]
[li]I can’t put my hand in cold, standing water. If I’ve filled up the sink for dishes to soak and the water has gotten cold, either someone else has to pull the plug to drain it, or I have to get my rubber gloves on. Cold, sudsy, dirty dish water feels soooo gross.[/li]
[li]I hate when people touch my face, with the exception of a light touch by my SO. When other people do it, I feel the urge to immediately wash whatever nasty crap they transferred from their hands to my face.[/li]
[li]No one’s allowed to touch my ears. It’s a horribly oogy feeling. When I was 12, a tick crawled into my ear canal, and even someone coming close to my ears freaks me out.[/li][/ul]
food on my plate is not allowed to touch. Never. Have never figured it out, don’t care to, just don’t let it touch.
I had a lot of quirks when I was a kid. The most notable was that I had to step on each different type of pavement in powers of two. If I could not step completely over a patch in a sidewalk or street I had to step on it twice. If I couldn’t cross a street with 8 giant steps on the asphalt I had to take 16 baby steps. This started long before I had heard of exponents. It lasted for years. Finally one day when I was about 16 I got to a point in a sidewalk where it had been replaced with newer cement for a few yards and my count was 75. I was about to start marching in place until 128 when I just said ‘fuck it’ and walked on, not counting. The spell was broken. A lot of my strange habits went away in similar ways.
My major remaining quirk is a huge aversion to the sound of a rubber-surfaced, air-filled ball hitting a flat hard surface. Tennis, Baseball, and Golf are fine, Football and Soccer slightly bothersome at moments, but Basketball and Volleyball are torture. A whole game would send me to a mental hospital. Just the thought makes all the muscles in my back tense up.
I’ll have to go back to the junk…Mountain Dew.
Helium ballons must not be anywhere near my head. I prefer if they are not in the same room with me.
(One of my first jobs was blowing up balloons on a helium tank - way too many exploded right in my face.)
Ha! I got off work today from my job at the city convention center, and discovered that somebody on the banquet staff had filled the men’s locker room with the helium balloons from a group’s party the night before. Okay, they’ve done that before, but this time it was so many balloons that I literally could not see where I was going (and this is a small room). I was tripping all over stuff on the floor because I couldn’t see it. “Fuck this!” I said. I pulled out my razor-sharp box knife and exploderated every damn one of those balloons.
I bet you would have hated that 
I’m creeped out by parts of buildings that used to be outdoors, but (due to a building expansion) are now indoors. No idea why.
There’s a Nordstrom at a mall here that gives me the royal hebegebees because of this.